‘American Gothic’: Shut Up and Eat Your Squirrel

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“Thanks for keeping your mouth shut,” says Virginia Madsen in the second episode of American Gothic; too bad she isn’t the show’s story editor, since the characters in this 13-part murder mystery, premiering on Wednesday on CBS, do tend to talk entirely too much, ruining what little suspense the show tries to build up.

Madsen is the matriarch of a clan referred to as part of “Boston’s wealthy elite,” and Jamey Sheridan (Homeland; Law & Order: Criminal Intent) its not-long-for-this-world paterfamilias. Their adult children are a bad lot that includes a daughter running for mayor (Juliet Rylance), a black-sheep son who’s making a reappearance at a family gathering after being away for 14 years (Banshee’s Antony Starr, who gets to shave with a large butcher knife, hold the shaving cream), and a recovering-addict son who’s eager to ruin his sobriety. He is played by Justin Chatwin, who has chosen to distinguish himself visually from the large cast by wearing oversize glasses and sporting a hairdo that looks like a woodchuck balancing precariously on his skull.

There’s a serial-killer plot about a murderer called the Silver Bells Killer, who uses what is possibly the most cumbersome calling card of any serial killer in history: a silver hand bell left at the scene of the crime. To give you a sense of how unwieldy this gimmick is, someone finds a box of silver bells the killer has hidden, either out of self-disgust or because the box just looks too damn heavy to haul around from corpse to corpse.

But wait, there’s more: There’s a cutesy art-history in-joke running through the show. Its title, of course, is also the title of the famous Grant Wood painting, and each episode is named after a well-known artwork. The pilot, for example, is called “Arrangement in Grey and Black,” which is the title of the James M. Whistler paining better known as “Whistler’s Mother” — and at one point, mother Madsen sits in profile in an intentional visual echo of the pose depicted in the painting. Beyond proving someone involved in the show attended an art history class, this doesn’t add any enjoyment to the proceedings.

This American Gothic has nothing to do with the other CBS American Gothic series that aired in 1995, created by Shaun Cassidy and starring Gary Cole. The new project’s creation is credited to Corinne Brinkerhoff (The Good Wife; Jane the Virgin), whose previous work seems too smart for what’s going on in American Gothic. I will prefer to think that, like the people in another CBS show created by her former employers, her brain has been momentarily invaded by BrainDead’s alien ants.

One more thing. We’re supposed to be startled and repelled to learn that during his years in Maine, Antony Starr’s Garrett ate a lot of squirrel. This I take exception to, as a scurrilous slur against both native Mainers and squirrels themselves.

American Gothic airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on CBS.